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جمعہ, مارچ 15, 2013

How sectarian killers operate with ‘impunity’ in Pakistan

The innocent are falling daily, the mothers are crying, the children are
weeping, the wives are suffering, the old are becoming older, the
humanity is dying but no emergency is seen at top level except a few
sympathetic words and condolence messages. People are losing faith in
democracy, they question, why they are not being protected, why the
terrorists are not being hanged, why this killing spree is not being
stopped, why the killers of Benazir Bhutto have not been brought to book
and why the attackers of Malala Yousafzai have not been arrested as
yet? The answer may not be forth coming but now the people have become
wiser and may not be mislead with hallow slogans. The youth which is
more than 50 per cent had to play a decisive role in the forthcoming
election. Instead of sitting idle and sleeping at homes, we need to come
out in large number to elect the people who can really take the country
out from these mounting crises. Until and unless the system of reward
and punishment is not adopted till then we can’t sail smoothly.___________________________________________________

Banned militant faction Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Ramzan Mengal is escorted as he walks to attend a protest rally

Hateful graffiti messages
against Shiite Muslims are scrawled along main roads. The striped flags
of a banned militant faction accused of hundreds of murders flutter from
homes. These are the outskirts of Quetta in Pakistan, from where Shiite
leaders say Sunni extremists towed a giant bomb by tractor to kill 90
Shiite Hazaras on February 16, after dispatching suicide bombers to kill
92 others at a snooker hall a month earlier.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group
officially banned by the government in 2002, claimed responsibility for
both attacks. Local Shiites say they know who the organizers are, and
where they live, and yet the authorities do nothing. An AFP reporter saw
no sign of police or paramilitary in Akhtarabad, the run-down
neighborhood from where Shiites claim the bombers drove the giant bomb.

Nor was there a security presence in
Killi Kambrani and Killi Badeni, dens of suspected kidnappers and
criminals, covered in slogans for jihad and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat
(ASWJ), described as the “political wing” of LeJ. Bombers determined to
exterminate Shiites have slaughtered more than 250 Pakistanis since
January 10 and questions are being asked about possible political and
military collusion. Pakistan has an abysmal track record of convicting
extremists, and there is growing alarm about perceived apathy towards
attacks on Shiites, which are similar to those that fuelled civil war in
Iraq. “Akhtarabad is their hub and main hideout.

Everybody knows they come from there to
attack Hazaras but nothing has been done,” said Shiite community leader
Syed Mussarrat Hussein in Quetta, the capital of the troubled
southwestern province of Baluchistan. Daud Agha, local president of the
Shiite Conference, said tip-offs about impending attacks are ignored and
the ASWJ tolerated. Amnesty International has said the failure of the
authorities to bring those responsible for sectarian violence to justice
“sends the signal that they can continue to commit these outrageous
abuses with impunity”. So how and why does LeJ operate with such
apparent freedom? There are many theories.

The worst violence is concentrated in
Baluchistan, fuelling accusations that the military turns a blind eye or
even encourages LeJ operatives, to distract attention from a six-year
separatist insurgency. “LeJ got stronger in Baluchistan after the start
of the Baluch insurgency,” says Anwar Sajidi, a Baluch rights activist
and chief editor of Quetta-based newspaper Intikhab. “The government is
supporting LeJ as a counter-insurgency strategy to show the world that
sectarian violence is also on the rise and the Baluch separatist
movement is not the only reason for killings.” LeJ, which is linked to
Al-Qaeda, was created in the 1990s out of the same pool of fighters
trained and nurtured by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States in
the 1980s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Last month the chief
military spokesman categorically denied the armed forces were in contact
with militants, including the LeJ. But despite Pakistan joining the
US-led “war on terror” after the 9/11 attacks, the armed forces continue
to be dogged by allegations of playing a double game.

LeJ founder and ASWJ vice president
Malik Ishaq has been accused in more than 40 murder cases but was free
until being taken into custody on February 23 for posing a risk to law
and order. Others say LeJ is protected because of the electoral support
it can harness in southern districts of central Punjab province, a key
battleground in upcoming national elections where the Pakistan Muslim
League-N is in power. “This politics of expediency may win
the party a few more seats in the upcoming elections, but the move
would provide further space to religious extremism already on the rise,”
author Zahid Hussain wrote in Dawn newspaper.

There is little to distinguish the ASWJ
from LeJ in public. “Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was created in reaction to
injustices by the government,” says Ramzan Mengal, the Baluchistan
president of the ASWJ. “We can ask the LeJ men to negotiate with the
government but the authorities will have to stop being influenced by
Shias.” A senior police official in Quetta told AFP his force was too
weak to act, because the LeJ and ASWJ had too much financial and
logistical support. Until the government develops a “multi-pronged”
strategy to shut down their support networks, he warned, Shiites will
continue to be slaughtered.

Many people in Baluchistan say there is
an international element to the violence, believing that Sunni Saudi
Arabia and Shiite Iran are fighting a proxy war on Pakistani soil.
Religious schools that have educated millions of Pakistanis in a
hardline Sunni interpretation of Islam are also partly to blame. “There
are hundreds of seminaries in the country who produce thousands of
extremists every year,” the Quetta police official said.